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March Madness? Late-winter storm busts flight schedules

Air travelers are getting their own version of March Madness. But it's not their brackets that getting busted, but rather their flight schedules. Airlines have canceled more than 460 flights so far today –

March Madness? Late-winter storm busts flight schedules

Snow removal equipment clears one of the parking lots at Washington Dulles International Airport during the last storm to hit the region, which came only about three weeks ago (March 6, 2013).(Photo: Paul J. Richards, AFP/Getty Images)

Today's worst flight problems are in the East, where more than 400 flights had been canceled as of 5:10 p.m. ET at the three New York City-area airports of LaGuardia, JFK and Newark Liberty. Nearly 200 more have been cumulatively canceled at three other busy mid-Atlantic airports: Philadelphia, Washington Dulles and Washington Reagan National.

But just as with the college basketball brackets, disruptions are cropping up in multiple regions. Dozens of cancellations are being reported at some of the Midwest's busiest airports, including Chicago O'Hare, Indianapolis and St. Louis.

And to the south, airports in such places as Charlotte, Raleigh/Durham, Nashville and Norfolk (Va.) are seeing a higher-than-usual number of cancellations as of 5:10 p.m. this morning.

Today's flight problems come after more than 500 cancellations on Sunday (St. Louis, Chicago O'Hare and Indianapolis were the hardest hit) and about 400 on Saturday, when Denver bore the brunt of the storm-related cancellations.

As has become common, most big airlines issued flexible rebooking policies for fliers with flights to, from or through the central USA.

The fine print varies by airline, but most allow customers to make one change within a certain rebooking window without paying additional fare or change fees.